Mita had her hands on her hips. “What girls are you referring to?”
“Oops, sorry, Mita. I meant ‘women.’” Gilang held up his two hands in submission.
As we were making our way to our respective vehicles, something else made us pause: Alam reported that a student guard had told him that hundreds or even thousands of people had congregated at various points along Kyai Tapa, the boulevard adjacent to campus that leads to the center of town. He said they had begun burning cars and were making their way towards the Tomang Plaza shopping center, very close by.
“So what do we do?” Bimo asked. “Wait till they pass or try to make our way through them?”
Not knowing how to read the situation, no one replied. No one knew what to do.
Alam told the rest of us to wait where we were for the moment. He would try to see what the situation was like outside and would be back in five minutes. No! I didn’t want to be separated from him again and I ran after him, ignoring Mita’s shouts for me not to follow.
“What are you doing coming with me? I’ll be right back.”
Alam seemed to intentionally pick up his stride.
“No, I’m coming with you!” I answered stubbornly as I struggled with my knapsack.
Alam took my knapsack from me and started to run. Near the front gate, we could see that the crowd of people who had amassed outside the campus gate earlier had begun to drift away. Alam questioned two student guards. They gave him an answer similar to the news he had heard previously: cars were being set afire and unknown groups of men were commandeering trucks and public mini-vans. The guards pointed towards a cloud of smoke whose source we couldn’t see. The situation seemed to be getting out of hand. I squeezed Alam’s hand as hard as I could, wanting to sew his hand to mine.
“Thanks!” Alam said as he hugged the younger men who remained standing there steadfast.
He then looked at me and gave me a little smile for having squeezed his hand so tightly.
“Don’t be afraid!”
“How can I not be when you disappear like that?”
Now he really did smile. “I didn’t disappear. I was just talking to Mas Willy.”
We walked back to where Gilang, Mita, Agam, Bimo, and Odi were waiting.
Bimo grinned broadly when he saw us holding hands. Reflexively, I released Alam’s grip. This was embarrassing. In Paris, there would be nothing out of the ordinary in such a display. But here, in Jakarta, I was turning into a shamefaced shrinking violet.
We went to our vehicles. Alam called out instructions before we started to go: “The crowd outside the gates has begun to disperse. We’ll drive slowly and make our way through. If there are too many of them, don’t do anything; just be patient and drive very slowly. But when you get to clear road, step on the gas. Got it?”
Agam and Odi, who were on Mita’s cycle, were the first to leave and the first to break free from the crazy mass of people on the street. Now it was our two vehicles that had to pass through the sea of people. It was totally crazy out there. As we made our way towards the intersection, we could see that Tomang Plaza was closed and now surrounded by a huge crowd. I couldn’t stand it not being able to record what was happening and I tried to shoot the scene through the van’s rear window. God, a crowd of people was breaking into an ATM.
“Are they looting?” I asked, surprised.
“Be careful,” Mita said to Alam, pointing to a group of long-haired men. Some were carrying thick wooden clubs which they used to rap the hoods of cards.
“Lintang, put that damn thing away!” she barked at me.
I immediately obeyed her and then was terrified to see that three men from that same group were now approaching our car.
Alam rolled down the window with feigned calm.
“Where are you going?” one of the men immediately asked.
“I’m trying to get home. My wife here is pregnant and I need to get her home,” he said as he stroked my cheek.
What!?
The three men stuck their right thumbs in the air.
Across the street, I caught sight of a few soldiers with rifles, sitting idly, watching the scene, and not doing anything at all.
When the men grinned at him and stepped aside for us to pass, Alam slowly stepped on the gas. But then, suddenly Mita screamed, “Watch out, Alam!”
Six or seven men came running towards us from the opposite direction. But their target wasn’t us; it was the car behind us, a Mercedes. Why they had chosen to stop the car and prevent it from passing, I could only guess.
“The people in that Mercedes, Alam, what’s going to happen to them?” I stupidly asked. Instead of doing nothing, Alam opened the door and got out of the car. Oh my God. He was calling out to the men. Two of the men broke away and came up to Alam. I didn’t know what Alam said, but I saw the brutes nod. They then called the other men, who had formed a circle around the Mercedes behind us. Alam got back into the car shaking his head.
“What happened out there?” I asked.
“When I looked inside the car and saw the driver was about the same age as Om Aji, I told the men he was my uncle and they believed me.”
He shook his head half hopelessly. Through the rear window we watched as the thugs allowed the Mercedes to pass. Mita tapped Alam on the shoulder and told him to speed up. Alam muttered that it was impossible for us to save everyone and that we couldn’t expect any help from security authorities.
On Kyai Tapa we gained a distance from the crowd, and all breathed a sigh of relief. When the van was in the clear, Alam stepped hard on the accelerator, making the vehicle lurch forward.
“So, I’m pregnant am I?”
Alam glanced towards me with a smile. “What did you want me to say? That you were in a hurry to edit your film footage?”
“Who were those men?” I asked. “They definitely weren’t students and they didn’t look to be people from around here.”
Alam shook his head. “I don’t know. But it’s weird. All the men were about the same age. Some had crew cuts, others had long hair, but all of them looked physically fit and well trained—not like ordinary people. You saw how those soldiers just sat there watching even as those guys were picking and choosing which cars to stop.”
“So, who were they then?”
Again, Alam shook his head. I’m sure he had a hunch but didn’t want to say.
Mita, who generally had the coolest head and was the most rational-minded person among us, had just gotten off the phone with her mother and now looked worried as she reported their conversation.
“My mother told me that a group of men in a public transport van came and attacked Bintaro Plaza this morning. She’d gone there to shop at Hero Supermarket. Luckily, she managed to get out of the mall before they started to do anything. Even so, she was still afraid and there was real panic in her voice.”
O, mon Dieu.
Mita clutched Alam’s shoulder. Mita rented a small house in the Setiabudi area to be close to the office, but on weekends she—like Alam—usually went to see her parents, who lived in the suburb of Bintaro Jaya.
“Is your mother at home now?” Alam asked.
“Yes, but she’s in a panic. My father and their neighbors are coordinating efforts to blockade the roads into the area.”
“You should go home,” Alam advised. “Agam can take you there on your bike.”
“That’s all right.”
“This isn’t an offer. It’s an order. Hold on tight. I’m going to go fast!”—Alam drove Om Aji’s van with the speed of a plane. I was afraid to open my eyes. I was afraid we were going to crash into an electric pole or ram into the curb. But in the end we arrived safely at Satu Bangsa just around dark. Gilang and Bimo still hadn’t arrived in the jeep, but Alam felt sure they were safe. I had forgotten to eat all day and immediately stretched out on the sofa. I don’t know how long I’d closed my eyes, but suddenly I was awoken by the feel of Alam’s hand stroking my cheek. He was seated next to me, on the ed
ge of the sofa. Alone.
“We have to go, Lintang.”
“Where is everyone else?”
“They’ve all gone home to their families, because they’re worried about those crowds breaking into the areas where they live. I think this place will be safe. Plus, there are a couple local watch-men outside.” I sat up straightaway.
“While you were asleep in here, there were bands of people burning cars and vandalizing stores out there. Agam took Mita to Bintaro. In times of danger like these, it’s usually neighborhood associations and their members who come together to prevent anything from happening to their homes and families.”
I was perplexed. What kind of mentality was this? What did the people have to protect themselves from?
“What, you mean to protect themselves against the kind of people we saw outside Trisakti?”
“That’s right,” Alam nodded.
“But why would they attack a neighborhood? What would they do?”
“Almost anything. Rob, steal, vandalize, or worse. Anything that an evil person would do, especially when he finds himself in a crowd of similar-minded people. With any luck, nothing will happen,” Alam said as if to calm me, though I felt sure he was trying to calm himself.
“There’s something weird about the group psychology in this country. When people are in a group, as soon as one of them screams ‘Thief!’ or ‘Communist!’ there’s no stopping the rest of the group from attacking the target, whether the target is an individual or a family and regardless if the accusation is right or wrong.”
I found this kind of behavior completely outside the norm of rational human behavior. Who could explain this aspect of Indonesia? I came here to study history and hear the stories of the victims of 1965 and now I’d found myself in another mad situation.
I thought of Tante Surti. “How is your mother?” I asked.
“She spent the night in Bogor. Ever since my grandfather died, my aunt Utari and her family have been living with my grandmother at her place in Bogor.”
“That’s good. So, what do you think we should do?” I asked. “Stay here or go to Om Aji’s place?”
“We’ll go to my place. I called a neighbor of mine earlier and he said that Pondok Indah and Pondok Pinang are still safe.”
I nodded, not inclined to contest his decision.
Once we were in the car, I called Om Aji and Tante Retno, who somehow already knew that I was safe and with Alam and that Andini was with Bimo. What? How did that happen? Where did they find each other?
“When you were asleep, I made some calls—to Om Aji, Gilang, and others. Because we were coming to the office anyway, Bimo and Gilang decided not to come back here. Instead, they went and picked up Andini at her place and took her and her friends to Gilang’s house.”
Even as we were driving from Satu Bangsa to Alam’s home, Alam was constantly calling friends to ask what roads were the best to take. Apparently, many main streets in the city had been barricaded or weren’t safe for vehicles to pass. Alam took such a circuitous route, through numerous tiny side streets, which he called “rat paths,” I could never possibly retrace our journey. And, as was becoming increasingly more common, I left everything in his hands, not even bothering to ask why these rat paths, which were hardly wider than the van itself, should be any safer than the city’s main streets. For the time being, I decided, any kind of logical question had best be discarded in the gutter outside. Or more precisely, anything that might seem logical to “Ms. Sorbonne”—which is how they referred to me when this alien creature began to ask too many questions—had to be put aside.
Jalan Pondok Pinang, where Alam lived, looked quiet and completely dark. I looked at my wristwatch: 11 p.m. With no small amount of trepidation, I picked up my knapsack and got out of the car.
“All the lights are off around here,” I whispered to Alam. “Do you think that’s intentional?”
Alam said nothing as he unlocked the front gate and herded me inside. After re-locking the gate, he told me to go inside the house. He was going to check the doors and windows outside. The more caution he exercised, the harder my heart beat. Where was I going to hide my video camera and laptop? I didn’t want these precious objects defiled again. O, Sainte Vierge… Why was I thinking about my belongings again? They weren’t important. What if, as Alam had described, a band of marauders had come into the neighborhood and robbed people’s homes? Or what if they had injured or harmed the people living there? And what about Mita and her family? Were they safe? I had to call her.
When Alam came into the house, he immediately closed the wooden window blinds of the living room. “All the doors and windows are locked,” he told me. “Are you hungry?” he then asked. “Or would you like to take a bath?”
I nodded while I waited for Mita to answer her cell phone.
“Mita, how are you?”
“It’s tense here,” Mita said slowly, in a half whisper. I wondered why she was speaking that way.
“No one is sleeping. Everyone’s awake. We’ve got siskamling outside, but it’s dark and scary because we had to shut off the lights. Where are you anyway?”
“I’m at Alam’s. It’s dark here too. ‘Sis’ what, Mita? What’s that?”
“Sis-kam-ling… Alam can tell you all about neighborhood security systems. And tell him to hang a sajadah on the fence outside.”
“A prayer rug on the fence? Whatever for?”
“Just tell him to do it; he’ll know. Bimo and Gilang said there are gangs of men making their way through North and East Jakarta, especially ‘non’ areas.”
“‘Non’ areas? What are you talking about? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
I could almost hear Mita struggling to maintain her patience with me for my stupidity.
“To wit, ‘non-indigenous Indonesians,’ ergo ‘ethnic Chinese,’ Ms. Sorbonne!” she hissed. “The Chinese are always the first to be hit, their homes attacked and vandalized. But I don’t have enough information to say more. Ask Alam about it. I have to get back to watching my mother; she’s still in a daze, absolutely linglung.”
I turned off my cell phone and looked over to see Alam, who was still on his phone. I didn’t have even enough energy to write down “siskamling” or “linglung” in my notebook.
“Alam, Mita said we should hang…”
“…a prayer rug outside. In a minute.”
“She said they’re attacking ethnic Chinese.”
“Yeah, I know, I’m just getting information on that now,” he said pointing at his cell phone. “Why don’t you take that shower you wanted.”
As I hadn’t brought a change of clothes, Alam pointed to the armoire, indicating for me to take a towel and choose something of his to wear. I walked lifelessly to the bathroom. I barely remarked to myself about its small size, neatness, and simplicity. I stared at the showerhead with fear and exhaustion. Why did I feel like I had been betrayed? Why at the time when I had begun to love this country had this feeling been summarily eviscerated? I turned on the water but lacked the energy to take off my clothes. Instead, I walked into the shower cubicle and sat down in the corner, beneath the streaming water from overhead, hoping the water might wash away my fears and sadness. I had just begun to love this place, this place called Jakarta. Maybe I couldn’t yet say that I loved Indonesia, because I knew so little of it; but, from day to day, I had somehow begun to feel a bond that was difficult for me to describe. There was this amazing strength and fortitude in the people I interviewed, which I found to be awesome and attractive. How could Indonesians be so strong? What were their bodies and souls made from?
Why did this all this violence have to take place right in front of my eyes, just when I had begun to love this place and its people? The attacks on the homes of Indonesian ethnic Chinese… My God, what year was this? Had we suddenly retreated two centuries into the ignorance of racism? Or, after thirty-three years since 1965, had there been no change? I had to correct what I’d said to my father. T
here were some things in Indonesia that had not changed.
I heard a soft rapping on the bathroom door. I didn’t know how long I had been sitting on the shower floor.
“Lintang?”
I didn’t know if the voice was that of Alam or an angel. The warm water now felt more calming and soothing. I folded my body, hugging my knees. Looking up, I saw an image, that of Alam in front of me. He turned off the water, lifted me to my feet, and took a towel. Like a withered stem of celery, I let my body fall onto his shoulder. He led me to the bed and helped me to sit. I was still crying. He hugged me, then kissed my forehead, and begged me not to cry. I tried as best I could to stop. I was not given to hysterics. Everyone who knew me knew that about me. There were very few films that could bring tears to my eyes or make me unable to sleep from thinking about the fate of their characters, like Sophie’s Choice and The Music Box—or almost any film by Akira Kurosawa. So I didn’t understand why I kept crying, with my tears bursting from a dam that had broken open inside me.
I only then realized that Alam was also wet. He gave me a fresh white t-shirt that was much too large for me and a pair of running shorts with a pull tie. He exchanged his own wet T-shirt with an old and faded black one with no elasticity but that was obviously comfortable to wear.
“They might be too big,” he said of the clothes I had put on, “but yours are wet.”
He handed me a new towel and then helped to wipe my wet face.
“I want the T-shirt that you are wearing,” I said hoarsely.
He looked at me in surprise but then took off the shirt and gave it to me without saying anything. Pulling off the white T-shirt he had first given to me, he put that on instead.
“I’m going to make some tea. Want something to eat? I can make some instant noodles.”
I shook my head. “Just tea, please.”
Alam left the room to boil water. I put on his shirt, which was big enough for two of me to fit inside, but I loved sleeping in T-shirts whose cloth was limp and almost threadbare. And I liked the smell of Alam’s body. My own had no energy, not just because I hadn’t eaten anything since going to Trisakti earlier that day, but because of my memories of that day’s mad events, which I would never forget for the rest of my life. The information Mita had given me was the most disturbing. What was happening in the residential enclaves of ethnic Chinese Indonesians? My God, what about Om Tjai’s family? Did he still have close friends in Jakarta? What had those gangs of unknown men done to their homes? Had they raided them, turned them inside out, just as the military had done in 1965 when they set on the homes of Communist Party members, their families, and Party sympathizers? Was this any different? Alam had mentioned to me the wild and angry look he had seen on the faces of the groups of men—“thugs” would be a better word—who had been overturning and burning cars in the street. They had robbed, they had vandalized…
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